


No Godly Road

by cakelocked



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Accidental godhood, GNU Terry Pratchett, Gen, Gods, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-19 13:56:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22245475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cakelocked/pseuds/cakelocked
Summary: What happens when a god believes,reallybelieves, in a human? Brutha and Om find out.
Relationships: Brutha & Om (Discworld)
Kudos: 24





	No Godly Road

Om believed in Brutha. No other human had ever been _believed in_ by a god before and as it was as it was, no one knew what to expect, least of all Om.* Gods did not usually believe, as in truly believe, in anything. What was the point? It was the same with praying. Who did you pray when you were a god? Short answer was: no one. Long answer was the same, but with more theological explanations.

> *)Om had pointed it out to Brutha, who'd in turn spoken with Didactylos. He'd laughed quite merrily before he went off to a tangent about a famous philosophical debate dealing with a spinning drum, a cat and a buttered bread.** 
> 
> **)Namely, what happened when you locked the cat and the bread in a drum and then gave it a spin. Theoretically, you could create unlimited energy with it. No one had ever tried it though.

  
In fact Om was the only one who seemed to care. Brutha was... Brutha. He simply believed. Truth to be told, there was actually nothing simple about Brutha, as Om had come to realise. Still, he concerned himself with such worthy endeavours as reforming Omnia and copying an entire library from his memory on his free time. So, no big deal. Om was in no way feeling neglected. In fact, when it came to Om... well. He had all the time he wanted and then some. He had plenty of followers now and fresh believers popped up in a steady rate. Life truly was smiling at him. It just just made sense that he should be getting all chummy with the other gods up Cori Celesti. Or even mildly terrorising his believers.* 

> *)Mind you, only mildly. No smiting, not trampling. Just a bit of... creativity. It was an effective compromise to keep Brutha happy and the faith fresh. 

Therefore the only reason for Om to be on Brutha's desk in a form of a tortoise and eating a piece of seedless melon almost his size was Brutha's annoying unconcern about the full god and belief business.* The melons had been one of the first things he'd done after getting his powers back. Those and new lettuce farms. 

> *)Visits definitely hadn't become a regular occurrence. Om just popped in... sometimes a couple times a day, even.

"Brutha." Om's voice took a wheedling note.   
"Brutha. Notice me. Your god commands you." 

  
Brutha hummed and finished copying a page. "I do notice you. I just have to concentrate, this is a tricky bit."

  
Om huffed, biting a big piece off the melon in a sulky manner. He could feel Brutha and his faith as always. Ever since that day on the beach though it had been different. More... there simply was more. Om had believers, so he had power. He had Brutha to believe in him and so he had even more power. But now _he_ believed in Brutha, which meant... The brains of the turtle are not meant to complex thoughts and he huffed in irritation, swallowing yet another piece of melon. 

  
"I know you are worried." Brutha said then. "I can hear you, and I can feel you, now. More than before." 

  
Om waggled a front leg at him. "It is just because of that completely carefree manner of yours that I am worried! It's never been done before! A god believing in a human! Who knows, I could've melted you with my faith? Ever thought about that before you just went and -" 

  
"I know you'd never hurt me," Brutha said, cutting Om off.   
That shut him up for a while. He could feel the truthfulness behind Brutha's words. 

  
_He really believes that_. Om was silent for a moment. "Did you know that those bastards up Cori Celesti thought it was all a game?"* He said then, thinking it wise to change the subject. Too much sentimentality was bad for gods.

> *) The new library's roof was coated with copper, otherwise such remark could've been a bit hazardous. Even for a god.

  
Brutha stopped working and put the stylus away. He turned to look at Om, his face an open book that Om couldn't read at the moment. "It does not surprise me, not really. But you are different now. You are not like them."

  
The absolute certainty and the pure faith behind his words was enough to send a little sparks of lightning skittering around Om's shell. Heedless of the sparks Brutha leaned forward and touched Om, surprising him. Brutha had lugged him around in their faithful journey to Ephebe and back, and before that. But he hadn't touched Om since their return to Omnia. 

  
"Oh- wait, wait!" Om's words were too late as Brutha had already laid his big hand flat against his shell. It was as though a bolt of lightning had struck them both. A single brilliant line of light connected them for a bried second before vanishing, leaving behind only a slowly dimming ghost image burned back of their eyelids, *a sensation of tingling and a strong need to sneeze. 

> *Tortoises have actually three eyelids. Talk about overachievers.

  
Brutha blinked slowly and raised his other hand up, turning it around and squinting. "I do seem to glow now." The glow was, at the moment, clearly visible but alredy fading.

  
Om cursed colourfully in many, many different languages he knew and some of which did not exist anymore. "That wasn't very polite, was it?" Brutha said and then shook his head.

  
"What, you shouldn't understand what I was saying!" Om all but shouted before stopping. "Unless... Oh gods damned, you _are_ a god now. Or at least partly." 

  
Brutha frowned, whole of his round face contorting to make a frown you could not miss. "Me a god? You cannot mean it." 

  
"Yes I bloody well do! The faith of the Omnians, it goes into me and then it goes into you because _I_ believe in you. And _you_ believe in me. It's a damn circle, it is! Ergo, you're a god too."   
Om fell silent and watched Brutha. You could tell when Brutha was thinking hard; the silence grew heavy with thoughts like icebergs. The bit you could see was only a tiny part, most of the job was done elsewhere much deeper down.

  
"That means...," Brutha started and paused then for a second. "What does that mean?"   
"Buggered if I know. We just are." 

  
And so they were. For the hundred years they had agreed, until Brutha did what humans do when they reach old age: died.

Om had been elsewhere but he could tell the difference immediately. "Gods damn that brat!"

Brutha walked the black desert. The brilliant light of the stars lit it and the dunes were filled with serenity. None of the stars looked familiar to him.* Brutha was reminded of his trek through the desert with Om and sighed. He knew that Om would be annoyed at him. That wasn't fair though, Brutha hadn't meant to die like that. 

> *)Brutha remembered every scroll he'd copied and and some of those had been about stars. After that the sky back home had been full of names to him. Here though, the stars were all unnamed and he found that strangely peaceful.

  
Vorbis shuffled along behind him for an indeterminate time before stopping and turning to look at the sky with a focused expression and then slowly fading away. Brutha was left alone in the starlit expanse but he was not alone for long. There was no noise to be heard but he felt when Om arrived. 

  
"Oh ho. Look at you. All young and spry again. The glow is a nice touch too." 

  
Om wasn't in the form of a tortoise this time. He appeared before Brutha as a man about his age wearing an Ephebean style toga. Still, Brutha could tell it was him because of his inhuman eyes and slight mattering of scales running down his hands. Despite the nonchalant tone, Om scanned Brutha with his eyes almost frantically before he seemed to be sure that it truly was him there. 

  
"I must admit that having no back pain does feel good," Brutha answered and smiled then, a full smile that lit his round face and made him shine even more. He literally shined; ever since Om arrived he had started to glow. 

  
"All right. Ready to get out of here? I want to show you my new house. _Our_ new house. Cori Celesti is so last century, I found us a place in the circle sea instead. Very few neighbours, prime seaside property." 

Brutha stepped forward and then hesitated. "Can I? I thought you couldn't go back, not from here." 

Om huffed and took his hand. "Of course you can. You are a god, and this isn't a way for a god to die." 

And together they went. It _was_ a nice place, peaceful too. Not many gods popped around to visit, besides the newt god P'tang P'tang, who brought them fish. They even went to a vacation in Ankh-Morpork one time.*

> *) They had very nice time and absolutely no trouble with the City Watch. 

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta read, half written at 2AM. I apologise for any possible mistakes etc.


End file.
